Chapter 14: Return the Slaying Moon
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The invaders crossed the distance from horizon to the valley of the hills like wolves to fresh meat, tireless as though they had not spent the previous fortnight flying towards the coast on winged feet. Ulquiorra was right, Grimmjow thought as he watched the black wave of men surge towards them. Human notions of pain and exhaustion commanded no power over these men possessed by demon strength.
His warriors took their positions. At their front a rank of archers bearing bows as long as they were tall notched arrows to the string and at Grimmjow's shouted command, let fly a hail of arrows down into the crowd. Within the length of a few heartbeats, they let loose another volley in flawless unison, and then another, the arrows falling like black rain upon an enemy force as endless as the sky above.
When the invaders drew within range, the assault joined from two more directions. From the north and south, Ulquiorra and Starrk led the men Grimmjow had positioned in hiding behind the hills in perfect, alternating unison of volley fire.
Thirty waves Grimmjow ordered, until finally his archers exhausted their quivers and he commanded them to fall back. And then, with his breath still and his heart beating behind his chest like a drum, he waited for the dust to settle.
The western army advanced forth as though untouched.
Grimmjow's jaw fell open. Were these men so bereft of their humanity that even such relentless volley fire would leave no mark? Or was this army truly so vast that even a hundred thousand arrows drained only a single drop from an endless sea?
There was no time to contemplate this. Having passed through the archers' fire, the invaders had now an open path to Grimmjow's men.
Grimmjow had no words of courage to bestow upon his warriors, no final platitudes to offer these war-weary men facing certain death or conquest. He drew his sword and swept two fingers over the blade, his blood a carnal sacrifice to Ichigo and a taste to whet Pantera's appetite in one.
His body trembled, exhilaration lighting his blood and setting his senses ablaze. The air tasted sweeter, the tang of his blood smelled sharper, the sight of endless foes below and white stars above clearer in his eyes. His nostrils flared, the white of his eyes encircled blue irises, and his teeth bared behind lips stretched from ear to ear in manic thirst.
If tonight would be the night he died, then he would die in a blaze of fire and blood worthy of legend. Pantera, they would call him in stories told around the fire. Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez, the warlord who carved new rivers in blood.
"Ichigo," he whispered, a promise upon his breath and an inferno in his heart. "I will make you proud."
Like a crash of tidal wave upon rocky cliff, the western army fell on Grimmjow's men in a sweeping current that threatened to uproot them by the heels.
Grimmjow crossed swords first with a man impaled through the base of his throat by a black-feathered arrow yet unfeeling like one already dead.
Perhaps he was already dead, Grimmjow thought, for when he stared into those fish-dull eyes he met no spirit behind them. They exchanged half a dozen blows before the warlord removed first his opponent's sword-bearing arm and then his head. He had turned to seek out new challenge before the body hit the ground.
One by one the western men fell to Pantera's sharp bite and swift strikes. Blood flowed freely from his blade and painted his hands with red that did not dry.
Grimmjow laughed his delight—he screamed it in a howl that carried above all clamor of steel and shouts of dying men. A windstorm of blue hair and razor claws, the warlord Pantera cleaved his way through his foes and blazed a trail in corpses wherever he went.
He was not alone. Through it all, Grimmjow never lost sight of long orange hair in the periphery of his vision. The ryoka fought at his side, defending Grimmjow's back even as the warlord cut down men on all sides. Though the boy breathed heavy, he fought with the same savage grace Grimmjow remembered him by. He had not yet faltered, and Grimmjow prayed for good fortune that his strength might endure this time.
The last vestiges of daylight faded from the sky and soon they fought only by the light of a sickle moon and white stars.
Grimmjow had only half a mind to spare for the battle beyond his immediate surroundings. The plan had been for Grimmjow to engage the invaders with his men first, and for Starrk and Ulquiorra to join him from north and south and hem in the enemy from all sides. In the chaos, it was impossible to see or know where they were, so Grimmjow could only trust they would lead their men as agreed on.
Time lost all meaning. Grimmjow's entire world shrank to the clang of metal, the smell of sweat and blood and the cries of men enraged and dying around him. The ground grew slick beneath his boots and Pantera's hilt chafed sticky beneath his fingers. In time he felt the ryoka's absence from his side, but he did not know when the fighting had pulled them apart.
"Ryoka!"
He spun on his feet and parted the crowds with his blade first in one direction and then the other, but nowhere he turned did he catch a glimpse of that bright hair. Grimmjow cursed—he had not meant to lose the boy, but now he had and in this madness of a hundred thousand men finding him again would be a feat indeed.
The battle wore on. Grimmjow was tireless, but his men were not. They crumpled and fell to monstrous warriors more demon than man, and he had to take care not to lose his footing over the bodies scattered across the ground.
At first, he did not notice the air shift.
It came as a slow encroachment upon his senses, insidious like pestilence spread under the cover of night. The heaviness in the air that had weighed on all Grimmjow's men for the last two days swelled now to oppressive smog that resisted all movement. Pantera grew leaden in his hands; his legs plodded slow and heavy as though wading through marsh water.
Men fell around him, enemies and allies alike—first to their knees and then onto their bellies with wretched groans. Grimmjow gasped, his heart fluttering like a caged bird as unseen force bore down upon him from all directions and stole breath from his lungs.
He struck Pantera into the earth to take his sagging weight like a crutch. His strength fled and his arms felt like two limp weights at his shoulders. If he were attacked now Grimmjow would be without defense, but not a single man in sight still stood.
He had strength enough to raise his head. His vision swam.
In the distance, a single figure stood tall amidst a field of fallen men.
Sweat beaded on Grimmjow's brow and his breaths grew ragged as he strained to make out what he saw.
The man approached. He wore no armor, clad only in sheer white untouched by blood and grime and bearing a sword with green hilt sheathed at the hip. His stride was regal and on his face lingered the ghost of a smile.
He was terrifying.
His steps shook the very earth and with each pace closer, the air swirled thicker and dread grew darker in Grimmjow's heart. At his feet, men retched into the earth, and Grimmjow grit teeth to bite back the bile rising in his throat.
He stopped before the warlord laboring to stay upright and though he was no taller than Grimmjow, he towered head and shoulders over him. With arched brow, he regarded the man like an interesting but repulsive insect.
"I have heard of you, Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez."
His voice was mild, but beneath the polite veneer Grimmjow smelled a terrible malice that made his hair stand on end. Visceral fear seized him by the core of his being.
This creature wore a man's skin, but he was no mortal man and Grimmjow knew in a flash of insight what had been responsible for Selae's questionable salvation on the night of the attack.
His arms trembled with effort as he strove to lift himself higher with Pantera.
The monster in white tilted his head at him and made a half step closer. "Impudent mud creature. Men do not stand before gods."
The air pulsed with power that seeped like a black miasma into every fiber of Grimmjow's being and throttled him from within. He felt it like a noose around his throat and a blade pointed at his heart. His knees buckled and he fell onto all fours. His mind stuttered.
Gods? Did this man mean to say—
"You?" he gasped. Even speaking sapped his strength. He felt as though he would never have enough air. "You are a…"
"I am something you will never comprehend. But I have no time to waste on you, human. You are not the one I seek." The god drew his sword. Its edge caught the moon's light, and streaming from the blade was power as deep as what saturated the one who wielded it.
The warlord willed himself to rise. He strove to move leg or arm and found no strength great enough to lift even a finger. This, he realized in a moment of stark clarity, was why men bowed to gods. This was why they knelt to pray, because in the era before their gods became stars, the mere presence of a god was great enough to bring men to their knees.
"You should feel honored I draw my sword for you," said the god as he advanced with blade raised. "Very few men can boast of dying by the hand of a god."
Grimmjow shuddered with impotent rage. Was this how he was meant to die? On his knees with his head bowed, his hands empty of sword? No, he denied. He would not die so helpless. He refused.
But still he could do no more than watch as the blade arched down towards him, and with tremendous effort Grimmjow raised his head to meet his end defiant in spirit if not in body.
Orange hair filled his sight. A terrible clash of steel sent sparks of fire arching through the air.
The ryoka stood over him, appeared from nowhere as though by magic, shoulders thrown back and wielding his nameless blade to block the killing blow meant for Grimmjow.
Grimmjow stared. How did he have strength to stand in the face of a god, when Grimmjow labored even to breathe? How did he have might enough to stop a divine blade?
"Ryoka…!"
Had he not heard what was said? Did he not know what he raised his sword against? He would die, Grimmjow thought. The ryoka was strong, but he was only a man and the being before them was a god.
"Get out of here, you fool! You will—"
"Grimmjow." The ryoka turned just enough to peer over shoulder at the man sprawled behind him, and Grimmjow's tongue seized. The boy's eyes were too gentle for one in the midst of battle, and here again, as he had many times in recent days, Grimmjow saw in them great sorrow. Unease coiled in his gut, for this scene before him seemed at once strange and incomplete, a puzzle for which he lacked a single piece. The warlord looked from man to god and then from god to man, and sensed here a great truth that yet eluded his understanding.
The ryoka gave a solemn little smile that struck him deep. The collar-like wound around his throat had deepened, and it appeared now like a raw ring of flayed flesh that bled freely. It painted his neck and collar in red and dripped a steady stream down his heaving chest.
"Stay there. Do not rise."
Grimmjow could not rise even without such order. He lay sprawled in bloodied earth, unable to part eyes from the scene before him. What manner of man was this ryoka? What man would stand before a god and dare to raise a sword against him?
The god smiled at the ryoka now, and the expression chilled Grimmjow though it was not meant for him.
"You presume to stand against me as you are now?" The god's voice was mocking, almost pitying. "Why fight when you have no hope of winning?"
The god spoke to the ryoka familiar like an old acquaintance, but no man had met a god in many thousands of years. The ryoka stood unmoved, unshaken by the scrutiny of one who could crush him without pause, and not for the first time Grimmjow wondered at how little he knew about this boy who had traveled by his side all this time.
"I fight because I must win," said the boy, and fire brought his eyes to gleam with fierce light. "Aizen, you have no shame."
Aizen.
Grimmjow's blood ran cold.
Aizen the deceiver, the outcast god defeated by Ichigo long ago. Aizen, who had held humanity for ransom in his quarrel against the other gods, who whispered beautiful things but to trust him was to welcome death. Grimmjow's people spoke of the deviant god with great caution, for Aizen disdained all humans and had been the cause of the great schism between earth and sky many thousands of years ago.
But it had been long since Aizen's defeat. While his brethren had risen to the heavens and become stars, the deceiver had been imprisoned deep beneath the earth where he remained to this day.
Or so the people believed.
Aizen the deceiver walked free. Grimmjow dared not breathe and for the first time in seven lonely years as warrior, despair was a black snake coiled around his heart where hope once ruled.
How could his people hope to prevail, when the enemy boasted the favor of a god so powerful and deadly?
The ryoka did not share his despair, or if he did, he did not show it. He stood over the warlord like a grim champion, tall and defiant, but Grimmjow saw in him tragedy also. He did not understand why this boy would defend him so faithfully, what moved him to stand so fearless against a being he had no hope of defeating. Why did he throw away his life without a thought? What had Grimmjow done to earn such devotion?
These questions echoed in his mind without end, even as the boy raised sword against Aizen. The god did not deign to parry the blow, and when the blade struck his chest it tore neither cloth nor flesh.
Aizen laughed. "You think you can cut me with a mortal blade? Do not mock me."
He swung his blade down at the ryoka's head. The boy blocked it by a hair, his nameless sword shaking like the rattle of a dying man's breath. Two strikes more they exchanged, both parried, and on the third the ryoka's sword shattered in two and the useless hilt fell from his hand.
Grimmjow saw the next blow before it fell. The god's mighty blade shot forth and in an instant, impaled his foe.
The ryoka staggered. He gasped a breath without sound, and when the god withdrew his sword, a tide of red streamed forth from the wound in his flank.
Grimmjow gasped as though the blade had found home in his flesh instead.
No!
He fought to rise, but succeeded only to raise himself an inch from the ground. He cursed—he strained, but all for naught, and his blood boiled at his own helplessness.
Aizen leaned close and grasped the boy by the throat. Fingers closed over the hideous wound at his neck, and this time, the ryoka cried out. His screams tore at Grimmjow like a knife broken and buried in his flesh.
With so little effort as though he weighed nothing, the god lifted him in one hand high enough that his feet cleared the ground.
"You have always fascinated me," said Aizen, in soft manner almost reverent. He turned the boy in hand and gazed upon his face with amusement as pitiless as it was cruel. "You were magnificent, once. What a pitiful end for a creature so beautiful as you were."
In that moment Grimmjow knew the meaning of hate. He wished to wring his hands around Aizen's throat and feel the crack of bone beneath his fingers. He wished to tear into his chest with teeth and claws and spill his entrails and gouge his eyes. A hideous snarl twisted his face, and for a time the warlord Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez was more beast than man.
"Put him down," he said. "Do not touch—"
And then the ryoka turned his face, heedless of the divine blade at his heart and the god's hand at his throat. He looked to Grimmjow with soft eyes and kind smile.
Cause for the ryoka's solemn mood ever since they had departed Selae revealed itself now to Grimmjow with sudden clarity. The boy would not live beyond this day, and he had known it for some time.
Why? Grimmjow wished to ask. Why did you come with me, knowing you would die?
A whisper nagged at the corner of his mind, a great feeling of unsettled angst which nipped at his heart and stalked his thoughts without rest. It was a sense of something important but forgotten, the very same sense that had seized Grimmjow in the moments before the lookout horn, and even before, during the battle at Selae when he had imagined Ichigo at his side and turned to find instead the ryoka fighting in mirrored image of his patron god.
Grimmjow could not shake his stare from the ryoka's face. In that beautiful form that suffered and bled for his sake, he saw so stark an image that he was at once without words and without breath, a vision so impossible he would have fallen to his knees were he not already prone.
Our names are reserved for those who have faith in us, the ryoka had told him on their last night in Selae. It is believed that if a man has faith, he will know our names.
The tremors that seized Grimmjow's body had nothing to do with Aizen's presence or the chill air. His eyes were wide like coins.
Memories of the past weeks came over him like a great flood. How the ryoka would not cut his hair for Raahl, how he disregarded the usual traditions of respect and worship for the stars. How he claimed a named sword—Grimmjow turned eyes above to twice-broken Zangetsu—and how he had left that sword behind. The boy feasted on fresh fruit and on strawberries above all, and had Grimmjow not known all his life these were the favored gifts to his god? Each of these small peculiarities Grimmjow had noted and dismissed now came together with jarring force.
But though his world had come to stand still, the rest of the world had not. Aizen raised sword once more, and Grimmjow knew the next wound he delivered was meant to kill. The blade fell.
"No!"
His cry was lost in a rush of wind and clash of steel. A powerful gale kicked up a plume of dirt that obscured earth and sky, and Grimmjow turned face away to shield his eyes from debris.
The dust settled.
The ryoka lay crumpled on the ground and the earth beneath his body stained dark with blood. A third man stood now between him and Aizen, but Grimmjow knew from first glance that this too was no man.
Ghost, came Grimmjow's first thought, for this new god appeared like an apparition in white robes and skin and hair pale as the moon above. His eyes glittered golden like an eagle's, but where should have been white around the irises there was black instead. Black-nailed fingers clutched the hilt of a white sword locked against Aizen's.
His power steeped the earth and rolled from his form in near visible eddies at his feet, more chaotic but no less formidable than Aizen's.
He turned to look at the ryoka, and Grimmjow saw they had the same face.
"King!" the white god shouted. "Rise! We must—"
Aizen pulled back and struck again, and the white god parried. The earth shook, the sound of their clashing swords deafening as thunder, the flash of light where the blades met white like lightning.
In the shadow of earth-shattering blows, Grimmjow crawled. His muscles burned under the festering power of two gods locked in battle, his bones ached and his fingers clawed mud to pull himself forward. By painstaking inches, he crept through filth and mire on his belly like the mud worm Aizen deemed him, towards the ryoka whose blood pooled wider with every beat of his heart.
"Ryoka…"
Grimmjow reached him. The ryoka's eyes fluttered open and his gaze peeled back the armor around Grimmjow's trembling soul.
"That is not my name," he said.
The warlord nodded. His throat drew tight under a noose of shame. "No. I understand now. I know your name."
"Then speak it."
Grimmjow's heart thundered in his ears. He met the other's eyes and found there unyielding strength from which he borrowed. Absent doubt, absent fear, he uttered forth a whisper to carry words almost too heavy to speak.
"You are Ichigo."
Beneath the fang of a sickle moon, the heavens tore open. The night turned white.